A significant component of this is that your (usually free) parking on both ends of the trip is subsidized by its requirement in local zoning, which increases general costs and subsidizes driving (parking spaces often cost $10,000+ apiece to build, excluding any land cost). The Highway Trust Fund, which pays for interstates, has also been bailed out by general federal funds in recent years, and local roads are usually built and maintained by general local taxation as opposed to any tax on motorists.

Diesel trains with conductors also have high opex as opposed to electric trains.

Plus transporting 4 people in a car is a best-case scenario for auto transport costs. And you seem to be making your estimate either assuming a very low TCO car or by excluding deprecation, maintenance, and insurance, since the IRS estimates the average car costs 54 cents a mile to operate.

Beyond that, cities along the Caltrain line have severely restricted development around train stations and forced it to their fringes along highways, which makes train transportation less practical and auto transportation easier.

> parking spaces often cost $10,000+ apiece to build, excluding any land cost

I don’t buy that for a second - even in extremely expensive areas like the Bay Area, concrete is less than $20/sq ft poured (ie including all costs), and most parking lots I see around here are blacktop which is even cheaper....

In extremely expensive areas like the Bay Area, parking is usually either elevated or underground. Most of the buildings going up in Seattle spend 3-6 months excavating a parking garage.

If they aren't elevated or underground, the land itself is worth hundreds of dollars per square foot, so even if the actual construction is negligible the parking space is still worth $30,000+ that could be used for other things.

Even if a parking space is worth $30,000, amortized over 20 years that's only $.17/hour.

Well, anywhere that is popular enough to need parking (e.g. downtown commercial) is going to be more expensive than a standard house lot in SillyValley. A 5000sqft lot is easily $1M and probably more so you're going to need $200/sqft just for land. The minimum size for a compact parking space is 8x16 and area usage isn't better than 50% in a parking lot so you're at 256sqft before you start building anything... that's $5k.

(You missed a zero: 8×16×2×200 = $51k.)

I'm not familiar with the USA as much, but the number holds true for Australia.

A quick google found me this: http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0504.pdf

Table 5.4.3 - 4 Parking Structure Construction Costs might be what you're after.

I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison.

You're essentially comparing the cost of fuel versus the cost of: road infrastructure, costs of a vehicle, costs of a driver, costs of risk (insurance / safety), parking and servicing (cleanliness).

The train's parking space at the station and during off-hors is paid for your ticket, as are the tracks and tunnels it travels through, its trained driver, its safety measures, the cleaning and security personnel.

What you'd have to figure is, that the fuel might be $20. But you need to buy a car, pay for it monthly, pay for insurance, pay taxes indirectly to fund your roads, pay for your license and the police who ensure safety of the environment you drive in, enforcing the rules, you need to clean your car yourself and park it during off hours. All of those costs and some others (like say, maintenance/repairs) must be averaged into your car ride. And you'd need to divide that by the average amount of occupants, which is something like 1.2 for trips to work, not 4.

And then you get a typical long-term situation. I agree, it can be frustrating to think 'this car I already paid for, on a road which I pay for anyway, with this monthly insurance I already have, the license I already have, the 3 people I already have lined up to make this exact trip, and the police that's already in place to ensure a safe road, this trip is cheaper than the train'... But there's a lot to it as you can see, and it's not even a typical trip.

One important aspect about public transport is that it subsidises low-popularity roads. e.g. where I'm from, a bus ticket is basically the same price in the entire province, despite some routes earning no profit due to them just connecting small villages with a bunch of old people with bigger cities. The solution of say Uber would be to stop servicing or increase the price there to where it becomes economically feasible. The public transport approach is to not stop servicing or charge ridiculous rates, but simply to move money around so that everyone has a semblance of affordable transportation available. It's similar to post delivery, it's under pressure because there's no money to be made in lots of low-density areas. But there's something to be said for the ability to cheaply send a letter anywhere in the country for a roughly standardised price. That context too should be considered when comparing prices to very specific trips. You'd often end up comparing an averaged out transport mode price versus a specific high-occupancy car trip, cherry picking without the intention.

Part of the challenge is all of the invisible costs of cars. Repairs & maintenance & tires are usually just as much as gas, but nobody thinks about that. Road maintenance for the city is stupid expensive, parking lots are too. But it's all magicked behind the curtain.

Whereas, with public transit, far more of the costs are represented by the fare.

For me, over the last 80,000 miles, about 85% of the operating costs were gas.

I did think about that, and I have. I briefly considered getting rid of my car to eliminate the cost of insurance and renting a parking space while working from home. It was at best break even to match my then current behavior with public transit and taxi-equivalents.

It seems about 40% of Caltrain is not covered by fares.

It's hard to find numbers, but it seems like as well something in the neighborhood of half of road costs are covered by gas taxes.

I'm trying to make the point that these costs aren't hidden and don't come from magic places, they seem to be real and Caltrain seems to be very inefficient compared to what one would expect.

One would expect a train capable of carrying hundreds of people would be orders of magnitude less expensive instead of being more or less at parity with one car per person.

The most expensive Caltrain pass is <$5K/yr. A small car that drives anywhere near that distance will cost >$5K/yr total cost of ownership, especially is parking is unsubsidized.

http://www.caltrain.com/Fares/farechart.html

https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2017/st-401668011/cos...

  A small car that drives anywhere near that distance will cost >$5K/yr

A brand-new, name brand small car

What cars are not name brand? (Self-built?)

People of modest means will more typically be driving used cars.

Yes, but the Toyota I bought used was still a Toyota.

It sounds like maybe you included this in your calcs, but I forgot to add depreciation as another cost.

And the most magicky auto costs are the ones hidden a few layers deep, in our city design & abundance of parking for example.

Most states estimate the cost per mile of an automobile at above $0.50/mile for business expenses. When gasoline was >$4, that estimate was estimated to be $1/mile.

You're also not estimating the liability very well. Likelihood and cost of death or injury of 5 people MV to SF and back added with chances of uninsured drivers leaves most drivers well underinsured. Also, the statistical unlikelihood of having a fully occupied vehicle.

Other costs include road subsides, parking subsidies/real estate costs.

The current IRS rate is $0.535/mi for deductible business expenses. I'm not aware of any states using a different rate.

The problem is that your car-driving case presumes the driver already wants to go to MV and is bringing his friends and they don’t mind coordinating to make that happen.

If you change your thought-experiment to a paid service, good luck being cheaper than CalTrain.

>The problem is that your car-driving case presumes the driver already wants to go to MV and is bringing his friends and they don’t mind coordinating to make that happen.

This doesn't really make sense. My original point is that for me personally going alone, it is cheaper to drive than to use public transit. If I bring friends it is _much_ cheaper.

At this moment I could take a CalTrain to SF for $33/person or a 4 person UberX to SF for $47.85.

So yup, if I'm traveling alone it's cheaper taking the train than having a driver. Easily stops being true if there's more than one person.

Once there are autonomous cars, paying the driver will go away too and I'd expect that to be cheaper than CalTrain.

I'm unconvinced by your arguments, while I can understand (and agree) with some of the points you're making, I don't think it's as cut and dry as you make it.

CalTrain is $7.70 from MV to SF[0], not $33/person (or $16.5/person in your original comment). Or, you can get a montly pass for $215.

You don't need to wait on trains if you get your schedule down. They're VERY timely in my experience (caltrain). It is true that a car grants you the ability to fuck around and not worry if you'll miss the train. Especially during heavy commute periods, there are trains every 5-10 minutes.

Now, lets consider other pieces.

Depending on the vehicle you drive, where you park (how much it costs/inconvenience), insurance, maintenance, fuel, and potentially a lease, I have a difficult time in seeing how that would come up to less than $215/mo.

Fuel: SF to MV is 40 miles. A honda civic advertises 40mpg, so you use about a gallon of fuel in one direction. You go two directions each day if you're commuting. We'll call fuel $3/gallon, since you can find it both cheaper and more expensive in the bay. So, $6 worth of fuel for a day. 4.5 (weeks per month) x 5 (working days in week) x $6 = $135 in fuel costs alone, with no traffic (fuel/time/inconvienence costs). Running through a quick Progressive Insurance thing, I find that the insurance for a 2015 Civic is $62/mo for the base option[1]. Maintenance is $18/mo[2]. And there you have it, a vehicle for commuting is more expensive than a monthly pass alone. Excluding parking, the upfront cost of the vehicle, etc.

Yes, the tragedy of transit is that it's more expensive when you travel in groups. Few transit systems have actually tried to address this from my limited experience.

[0] http://www.caltrain.com/Fares/farechart.html [1] https://imgur.com/a/uS5CV [2] https://www.yourmechanic.com/estimates/honda/civic

> Especially during heavy commute periods, there are trains every 5-10 minutes.

Looking at the schedule. there is no time when there is a train from MV to SF within 5 minutes. The best case is trains at 7:04, 7:11, 7:25 in the morning or 4:36, 4:46, 4:57, 5:05 in the evening. Caltrain is a lot fo good things, one thing its not, is frequent enough for people who work anytime other than 8-4/5.

There are at least 2 trains running southbound service to MV at 6 minute intervals, 10 isn't uncommon either.

206: 6:05am and 208: 6:15am. (10min)

314: 6:59am and 216: 7:05am. (6min)

216: 7:05am and 218: 7:15am (10 min)

and another set of these after 8am. Northbound service does the same thing in the afternoon.

MountainView also has 7:04/7:11 and 8:04/8:11 trains. Unfortunately it trades baby bullet stops with sunnyvale which makes it a bit more difficult.

You are right though, they don't run frequently on evenings and weekends--there is simply not enough evening volume to justify it.

Anyhow, as you can see, there are trains that run a frequency of 5-10 minutes (not <5 minutes) during heavy commute hours. They actually do run 5 minutes apart if you depart from Diridon.

If that doesn't work for you, that's another question.

> A honda civic advertises 40mpg

Buy a hybrid (ford c-max used is about 15K), drive conservatively and you can get that mpg in Bay Area traffic.

There's no way a civic gas gets that mpg on bay area roads, i would guess approx 20mpg tops with an experienced driver behind the wheel.

With self-driving cars, the "driver" won't be quite free. At this point I'm not sure we actually know what the cost of the "driver" of a self-driving car will be. By this I mean, the cost of development, licensing, insuring a self-driving car, and the costs of updating maps, keeping the car on-line, and managing a fleet of self-driving cars.

It may end up being less than a human, but do we actually know that? I'm not sure we do.

Caltrain is not cheap but even a one way fare to SF from the end of the line in Gilroy is only $15.

You're right, I didn't double the Uber cost for a round trip

Caltrain doesn't need to compete with multiple-occupancy vehicles. Most of the people riding it would otherwise be driving solo.

That said, reducing fares might attract more riders -- but whether it would increase revenue overall is more questionable.

No, the answer is city and state governments need to get serious about public transit. Every other major countries' cities invest in their public transit, it's just the city governments here in the US treat it like any public service, a barebones skeleton of a safety net for the poor that politicians target for cuts.

The median Caltrain rider makes $129,000 [0]. Unless a six figure income is considered poor, there's no way this is a safety net for the poor.

0: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...

That's amazing. Caltrain is the "tech" industry commute option. That doc says that "minority" (non-white) ridership share is growing, but it's actually Asian/Indian growing and black/hispanic shrinking.

You are right that Caltrain isn't a good example, but the bus transit systems of the Bay Area's suburban locales, like SamTrans, do reflect the GP's comment. SamTrans' 2011 median rider income was $36000, 64% had no car, and 33% were youths.

http://www.samtrans.com/Assets/_SSP/archives/2011/July_Open_...

These stats are somewhat skewed by the fact that cold-weather night bus routes are mostly populated by homeless who are there for shelter/warmth rather than transportation (I can't speak to SamTrans specifically, but it is the case for VTA). VTA likes it, as it boosts their census artificially.

Isn't mass transit generally planned for those without vehicles?

Those who own automobiles generally prefer to take them to places where parking is easy. Car-owning suburbanites who commute to dense urban neighborhoods where parking is expensive or difficult often take mass transit.

Parking is usually very cheap and easy in most of the US due to public policy that mandates it in sufficient quantity to satisfy any possible demand at no cost to the driver, and that makes it illegal to construct new neighborhoods where parking is not cheap and easy.

I calculate a different way.

Right now it's $322 to fly SFO to JFK for a trip of 5172 miles that's 3.1¢/mile. Compare a $8.25 trip Mountain view to San Francisco round trip at 20.6 ¢/mile. Are trains so inefficient that it's cheaper to fly than to ride?

Excuse me while I create a commuter airline between cities in the bay area.

You realize that there are a lot of fixed cost overheads, right? Surely the cost per mile from SFO to LAX is already much higher than what you quoted for SFO to JFK, and it's reasonable if local transit is even more expensive per distance.

28.6¢ SFO to LAX

A train is something like 10 times more fuel efficient per passenger. It's a much less complicated machine, and carries something like 10 times as many passengers per vehicle.

It's not reasonable that a train is more expensive. It doesn't have to accelerate to 550 mph 6 miles up. Piloting it doesn't require years and years of training. Compare SFO to your local caltrain station and tell me which one has a bigger impact on ticket price.

Have you tried pricing train tickets? I have, and it's always more expensive than flying.

Just now, I decided to price a ticket from Delray Beach, Florida (where the closest Amtrak station is to my house) to Deland, Florida (a distance of 220 miles). By car (and my car, I mean, my car, which gets 30mpg), it's a total of six hours (three there, three back) and will cost me $45 in gas (assuming $3.00/gallon, which is a bit high right now). This is doable in one day (leave by 9:00 am, arrive around noon, leave at 6:00 pm, arrive home by 9:00 pm).

The same trip, by Amtrak, costs $96 (twice my gas costs), and is impossible to do in one day. The train leaves at 9:22 am, arrives at 2:39 pm (over five hours, but more on this below). The train back leaves at 1:02 pm and right there you should see the problem---I have to stay overnight, incurring more cost. But anyway, it leaves at 1:02 pm and arrives at 8:31 pm, taking over seven hours.

The departure times assume everything goes smoothly. My first real train trip [1] from Delray Beach to Kissimmee (not quite as far as Deland) was incredible (don't get me wrong), but the train from Kissimmee back to Delray Beach was over two hours late, and I was informed that that is a common occurrence for Amtrak (it not owning the track it runs on), but had it been on time, I would have only had about half an hour in Kissimmee. Had the train from Delray Beach been late, and the train from Kissimmee been on time, I would have missed my connection.

[1] http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05 [2]

[2] I never did find out how much my friend paid for his trip, but I assume it was the price of a car.

Trains go much slower, so labor costs per mile are going to be higher. Also planes do not need 400 miles of track to get from SFO to LAX

And how much from SFO to San Francisco city, which is a meaningful comparison? And don't forget the cost of getting to and from the runway.

The main cost difference between trains and airplanes is the staffing required X hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA